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Friday, September 12, 2014

I'm not that great at coming up with subject titles for my blog posts. I should probably rename my blog "destroyed by Obamacare". That seems to sum up our lives at the moment.

Monday, we received a letter stating we couldn't appeal the medications that are no longer covered. I was numb. It felt like someone punched me in the gut and took my breath away. Four days later, I am recovering from the blow. I still feel numb, we still have no idea how we will manage, but we are placing our trust in God.

What does this termination of coverage mean for our family? Basically, it means all the meds we used to pay $150 in copays for each month will now cost us over $700 a month. Only one med I've not had the time to price and the total is $692.57 per month without it. If you look at the cheapest places to get the mito cocktail www.swansonvitamins.com , you'll see that buying enough ubiquinol so that each of my kids can get 1600mg per day each will cost us $257.63 for a one month supply.

The cheapest Idebenone I can find will cost us $106.75 for S each month. J doesn't take it. The D-Ribose at the high doses they take will cost $178.32 each month. On and on and on. While I was searching for the cheapest places and doing the math, I felt like I was going to vomit.

The extra $550 each month will be on top of our average over 2k a month and these figures don't even include the increased premiums we are paying! Families with chronically ill kids NEED higher monthly medical bills, right? Funny that so many of my liberal friends kept telling me how wonderful Obamacare was going to be in 2015. They would point out that starting in 2015, medication copays are required to go toward your out of pocket max. To which I would reply, "That means companies will start covering fewer prescriptions before 2015." I'd also remind them, "We have to make it to 2015 first." I was right on the mark. I sure hope I'm wrong about thinking we will be without insurance next year.

I'm not sure if I mentioned that we'd gone to Cincy last month to prepare for another surgery in October. We also found out my youngest will need extra testing and will need to see a neurosurgeon when we go back. J ended up getting a virus on his last day of 20 days worth of antibiotics for a bacterial infection. one week to the day, his brother developed a bacterial infection and is currently on antibiotics. Between all of this, ordering IGG and other medical supplies, I've spent hours and hours on the phone trying to figure out how we can get the medications covered. The nurses and doctors have also been working on it. Obamacare makes everything a nightmare. BEFORE the law... Everything was covered, the only medication we needed a preauthorization for was IGG, a blood product. Before the law, the doctor wrote scripts we paid for them and we had reasonable copays.

We liked our plan, but we didn't get to keep our plan. Our plan changed in preparation for the the Obamacare regulations starting in 2015. Sighs. With so many things going on right now, the last thing we needed was for our plan to change and medications to be no longer covered. Thank you, Obama, Pelosi and Reid....and all the RINOs who stood against Cruz and Lee last year on defunding Obamacare.